For Your Enjoyment
Regarding the Bees . . . (May 28th)
I saw my first BUMBLEBEE of the season about one week ago. It was hovering near my front screen door in the drunkenly meandering way that bumblebees do, when either the air temperature or pressure is not just so. Edgar's (yes, by this time I had bestowed him with a name and adopted him as my own for the next half an hour) furry bulk very soon proved too substantial for his flimsy wings to bear, and he took up a spot on the warm flagstone of the stoop. I took up a spot very near and hesitantly reached a finger to touch his fleecy thorax. He let me. I petted him again. And I swear that my dear Edgar hummed? purred? buzzed? . . . sighed with contentment. Henry David, eat your heart out.
My moment with Edgar was ephemeral -- a dance as fleeting as any that happens between two individuals who typically pass by one another without a second glance. Yet, as brief and spontaneous as it was, the encounter clearly has remained with me, which is why it saddens me to pass on the news of which many of you are probably aware -- the honey bee (not Edgar, of course, but a close relation) population has declined by over 25% in the past year. This is a frightening decline when you consider the fact that honey bees pollinate upwards of 100 crops (about one-third of the food we consume) in the West alone! In short,
if you eat fruits, vegetables, nuts and some grains, you owe a daily note of thanks to the honey bee.
Scientists and researchers around the globe are desperately attempting to discover the cause of this Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which is a phenomenon in which honey bees seemingly inexplicably abandon their hives, only to die apart from their colonies. The sad truth is that the leading cause of CCD, at this stage, is the proliferated use of mobile phones. Both the cell towers and the phones themselves send out signals at a frequency picked up by the honey bee, but which also interferes with signals the bees receive from one another, their queen, and their own physiological processes.
No one is suggesting you abandon your phones, but consider an option that can both attract honey bees while at the same time allowing yourself a glimpse of Thoreau's natural world -- add some lavender, glory bushes, rosemary, sunflowers or violets to your garden. These plants are bee-friendly, and deliciously fragrant to boot. It takes about as much effort as making a bumblebee sigh . .
(If you're still not convinced of the importance of this striped critter, consider one additional development in the medical field:
Bees have magnificently sensitive odor-sensing capacities. Biochemists and designers have constructed a prototype diagnostic tool called Face Object. A patient breaths into one of two chambers: the diagnosis space. Bees trained to detect a specific odor in the breath fly from the larger chamber into this one. The markers in the breath, and subsequently the specifically tagged bees, serve as indicators of a particular illness or condition. Not too shabby, is it?)
Jon Scieszka on "The Martha Stewart Show" (April 18th)April_18th_Edition.odtClick here to Download
Lois Lowry's Birthday Homage (March 20th)March_20th_Edition.pdfClick here to Download
Intriguing Samplings Read in 'The Believer' Magazine's Most Recent Issue (Early March 2008)March_2008_Edition.pdfClick here to Download
Staff Q&A Kick-Off Edition! (February 2008)